Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/713424
try to find any relation to Porsche, in which the location of the panel derives from motorsport – in Defender, the purpose of such a location is to allow steering the vehicle from the outside, with the reducer on, through the open driver's window), we will hear a characteris- tic clacking sound coming from under the hood, which decreases after the engine warms up. It reminds the driver about the Diesel engine nature of the car, when he or she want to quickly overtake another car or start off at traffic lights, which, quite surprisingly for o t h e r d r i ve r s , may be achieved without any problems thanks to short gear ratios of the 6-gear gear- box. It is also probably possible thanks to the engine torque of 360 Nm available from 2000 rpm. However, if we take the weight of the car, which is almost 1900 kg, and the constant 4x4 drive, we should not even think about low fuel consumption. No one should be sur- prised with oil consumption of 12-13 liters when driving in a city. Just forget about driving with speed. The safe speed that gives fair control over the car is about 80 km/h. If we want to drive faster, we start negotiating with Defender to keep it in the lane. Every turn requires the driver to focus and plan the maneuver in advance. I sometimes had a feeling that I'm playing chess, try- ing to choose one of the options of driving along the road. What's rather peculiar, similarly to long-distance run- ners who, at some point, no longer feel exhausted, the driver, with each driven kilometer, discovers the pleasure of driving a real car (quite a forgotten expe- rience these days), not some interface that sends sig- nals from sensors placed all over the car. At some point, we drove to a sandy, uneven terrain with tracts of dug sand. Of course we did not mean to test full off-road capacities of the car (which was not ours, expensive etc.), because many generations of users already proved its bravery in any possible, and even most astonishing, way. The change of the way of driv- ing the car was like a refreshing gust of air. The deeper we drove into sand, the more lively the car reacted and revealed its true nature. It was the time that we really started to appreciate the short gear ratio, high and straight position behind the steering wheel, the position of the steering wheel closer to the window, the suspension trav- el, and even the off-road tires that the car already had in the showroom. At some point we realized that each of us was getting more and more excited and that feeling was becoming greater proportion- ally to the difficulty of terrain we drove on. Rephrasing the famous saying, there aren't many cars that would make you so happy in such a short time, that is why I keep Defender in a special place in my heart for cars that are be- yond any classification. VEHICLES